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So: Newt as a vampire.
It would happen… Where would it happen? Newt wasn’t born this way, he was turned for sure, but where? In St Petersburg, in the shadow of the Church of the Spilled Blood? The river runs close to the church, and the last time Newt saw that river through human eyes was in March when it was iced over and hidden under a dusting of snow. By the time he emerges, dazed, blinking, aching through every inch of his body, the ice has melted and the river runs freely. It’s been - what, five days? Five days. Summer comes quickly to Russia, but Newt’s last memories as a human were of the final threads of winter’s grip.
Or perhaps in China? The crowded streets of Macau, the busy press of people and sellers and shoppers - through the back of a medicine shop, down a narrow alley lined with dragons carved into the walls, out into a market where pixiu pups lean their paws against wire cages and howl at passers by, chained xiezhi are sold as guards for the wealthiest of patrons, bifangs perch on metal stakes and peck listlessly at the flames below.
It’s easy for a foreigner to disappear from the streets here, and easier when he won’t stop asking questions and working his way into places where he doesn’t belong. He remembers the fear of being surrounded, the patronising head shake when he takes out his wand, the grave-cold hand that clamped around his neck -
Ghana, maybe? The sun is strong in Ghana, too strong surely for a vampire to survive, but the forests are thick and deep and, yes, home to a type of vampire. They call it the asasabonsam, a creature with hooked iron claws in place of its feet. It hangs from the trees and falls on unsuspecting prey passing beneath; Newt was searching for anansi spiders and he dodged the first claw but the second sank into the meat of his shoulder and the curved iron hooked around his collar bone. His wand tumbled from blood-slicked fingers and the lumos at the tip stuttered and died.
Well. Maybe not Ghana. The vampire Newt becomes doesn’t have iron claws in place of his feet. I’m not entirely sure if asasabonsams even turn their victims, truth be told. But it doesn’t really matter, does it? Newt’s a vampire now, fine. He needs a fix of blood every now and then - he’s not going to squeamish about it. He has places to go, creatures to meet, and if some of them shy away from him, that’s part of life. There are others that crowd close, winding around his legs and sheltering under the curve of the bat-like wings he sometimes sports.
It’s a very different menagerie that Newt brings with him to New York, hidden away in his impossible suitcase. Not completely different - Frank’s still there. Thunderbirds are powerful things, he won’t be deterred by the cold taint of darkness that flows from Newt’s shadow. And Pickett, Pickett stays; bowtruckles are well versed in carnivorous trees so he’ll hardly be fazed by a bit of blood. Besides, every plant understands the value of good fertiliser. But Susie the little feathered occamy hatching from her silver egg, she’ll be gone. Dougal, too, with a world of possibilities swirling in his eyes.
In their place, lethifolds ripple over the workshop floor, flowing up to drape themselves over Newt’s shoulders like a living cloak. Serpentine aspids coil at his feet, beaks dripping with lethal poison; huge dog-like pesanta wag their tails and rest their hole-ridden steel paws on his shoulders. Newt doesn’t sleep so the Nachtalbs can’t feed off his nightmares, but they trail behind him anyway and huddle in his shadow for the cold and darkness it brings.
A different menagerie, perhaps, and when they creep and sneak and slide through the gaps and crevasses of New York they leave more behind them than plundered jewellery shops and escaped zoo animals.
But this is the same: Newt is taken for questioning. Tina doesn’t stand behind him, and Jacob isn’t left in the cell to await obliviation; this Newt ran the nights and not the days, and he never gained a group of hangers-on who would become his friends. There are no executors waiting by the door and Grindelwald doesn’t sit opposite him, wearing Graves’ face and twisting it with his hatred. It’s Graves, in this universe, and his face is bored and blankly dismissive.
It’s the dismissal, Newt thinks, that does it. He’s been brought here, abandoned in an auror holding cell for who knows how many hours while his creatures wreak havoc across the city, and he’s had the manners not to flit away through cracks in the stone and the gaps between the bars. The patience to wait, to not tear this shiny building down stone by polished stone - the man, Percival Graves (and in Newt’s mind he sneers the syllables with dismissal), he has Newt’s case. He has Newt’s creatures. So fine, Newt will play nice, keep his wings pressed tight against the bones of his spine and keep his teeth sheathed in his gums. He can pretend to be human and pretend to be weak if it will get them back. But to be dismissed? Few would dare, not to him.
“Are you aware how many laws you’ve broken by smuggling that case in?” Graves asks, flipping idly through a stack of papers.
Newt pauses in the doorway, tilting his head as though in thought. “It doesn’t bother me,” he finally says, and resumes his languid walk across the room. The metal door swings shut behind him with the inaudible click of spells locking into place. Newt ignores it - the door won’t hold him, and this close he can smell the tense wary what is he not human keep up your guard radiating off Graves. Not that the auror shows it; his hands are rock steady, the pulse beating in his throat slow and even.
He is, objectively, attractive. Magic coils beneath his skin and the taste of it is electric on the air, and that is attractive too. It’s been too long since Newt last fed, and longer still since he’s enjoyed it.
“It should,” Graves says. “Your beasts have been confiscated and your international travel permits revoked. If you’re willing to assist us with dismantling the wards in the case, we are prepared to be flexible with your sentence.”
“Dismantling them?” Newt says, his voice dipping in mocking repetition. He stands across the barren table from Graves, his tall frame in sharp contrast to Graves’ seated form. In the half illuminated dimness of the interrogation room his skin is deathly pale and the red of his hair shines like blood when it catches the light. “Why on earth would you need me to do that?”
“In accordance with article 6.13 all dangerous beasts must be humanely destroyed - “
Newt disintegrates into coils of black smoke. He reappears in front of Graves in the same second, lifting him up to pin him against the wall with one clawed hand around his throat. Graves kicks out at him, the heel of his shoe slamming into Newt’s knee with enough force to dislocate a man’s kneecap, and raises both hands palm out for a blasting curse. It powers into Newt with the strength of an angry typhoon, magic lashing out and tearing through his shirt as it aims to shred him, throw him across the room, cut his chest open and leave his ribs white and gaping in the cold air -
“Are you quite done?” Newt asks, splaying the fingers of his other hand and inspecting the claws. His shirt hangs in tattered scraps; the skin beneath it is unmarked. He shakes one leathery black wing to dislodge a stray thread, stretching it out as he does so. He can’t fully extend it - the room isn’t big enough - but it’s satisfying to watch the way Graves’ eyes go wide at the movement. The dismissal is nowhere to be seen.
“Vampire,” Graves breathes, but his heart, oh his heart is steady and his magic thrums against his palms as it builds power for a different set of spells. Newt’s mouth opens in a delighted smile over teeth that curve too long and too sharp to be anything but lethal. Courage is a heady drug that tastes so much sweeter than fear and Graves reeks of it.
“So what does article 6.13 say about me then?” he purrs, stepping closer and arching his wings over them to cage Graves in. Graves puts one of his hands over Newt’s heart, his heart, and Newt wants to laugh because is he going to conjure a stake? A sun-blast spell, carve a cross into the soft flesh of his lungs? A weaker vampire might quail, but Newt - no. He leans into the touch, luxuriating in the warmth of Graves’ palm against his skin.
“Kill on sight,” Graves grits out and pushes his magic forwards - and somebody’s done their homework, because that’s a straight up killing curse that Newt has to dematerialise to avoid. Graves takes the moment of freedom to dive for the table and fry the alarms into wakefulness, enough magic in his pulse that the klaxon is almost deafening. Newt hisses in pain as he reappears, wings hunching protectively over his ears.
“Vampire in East-2B,” Graves shouts into the glowing spell rune. “I repeat, Vampire in East-2B - “
The wards are lighting up, the opaque white glow of a spell barrier spreading out from the door to seal the room, and Newt doesn’t have the patience for this. He snags Graves from behind, one arm clamping the struggling auror against his chest and the other digging into his hair to wrench his head to one side. Graves twists, but Newt’s grip is too strong to escape - except that Graves isn’t trying to escape, he’s sinking a fucking knife into Newt’s arm, one that burns with the familiar sparking pain of holy iron.
“Time to go,” Newt snarls, ignoring the pain as best he can. He latches onto the exposed line of Graves’ neck, teeth sinking easily into the vessels below the skin. Blood floods his mouth, hot and sweet and yes the taste of Graves’ defiance and his magic is every bit as addictive as Newt thought it would be, but he isn’t here to feed. That will come later; Newt will make sure of it. Instead he relaxes his bite and lets the venom trickle out of his hollow fangs, just enough to make Graves lax and pliant in his arms. The knife clatters as it falls to the floor and Graves sags bonelessly against him, eyes fluttering shut as he vainly tries to fight the sedative.
“You don’t stop, do you?” Newt asks quietly, licking a wet stripe up Graves’ neck to seal the sluggishly bleeding wounds. He smiles, blood-stained lips shockingly red against his white skin, and repositions his hold to pick Graves up bridal style. “I think I like that in a man.”
And this is what Tina sees when she bursts through the door with her wand raised and three aurors standing behind her as backup:
Graves, unconscious and bleeding in the arms of a demon. Newt’s head is bowed, tousled red fringe hiding his eyes, and his claw-tipped wings loom over him like the frame of some horrific gothic painting. He is almost gentle in the way he holds Graves, but the smirk on his face is fanged and there’s blood smeared at the corner of his mouth.
“You have something of mine,” the vampire rumbles. He lifts his head and makes eye contact with Tina, challenging, dark, dangerous, and his smirk only widens when she refuses to flinch. “I want it back.”
His wings snap down with a booming crack before she has time to respond and he’s black mist and smoke, streaming past her and out the open door. She spins, spells already flying after him - but the corridor is empty. Newt is gone, and Graves with him.
Graves comes to in a darkened room, layers of sheets pinned over the windows and rags stuffed into the cracks of the doors. There’s a desk in the corner with a single candle on it, the orange glow pooling around the wax-streaked brass holder and illuminating a stack of books and a sheaf of papers. Newt is bent over them, quill in hand - an actual quill! - filling the papers with tight, cramped writing. Graves waits for a long minute after he wakes, eyes trained on Newt for any sign that the vampire has noticed him. Newt doesn't react, just refills his quill from an ink bottle and turns to a new page.
Graves is, laughably, tied to the bed. The restraints around his wrists are carefully positioned to avoid cutting off his blood flow, but the knots are firm and unyielding. His ankles are loose, and his shoes and belt have been removed.
It’s the work of a moment to channel his magic through the twisted cloth and undo the knots. Outside the candlelight the room is dark, too dark to see anything; that’s fine - Graves can see Newt, and that’s all he needs. His fingers itch for a stake, holy iron, a wand, anything - but he doesn’t have time to give something the proper blessings to take down a vampire. Besides, he has enough wandless magic for a killing curse, that’s all it’ll take.
A silencing spell to disguise his movements and a ventriloquism spell to mimic the sound of his breathing and heartbeat coming from the bed, and Graves slips to his feet. He pads across the floor, dampening his magic as much as possible to avoid detection, and raises a palm in preparation for the spell. Newt, oblivious, keeps writing.
Die, Graves mouths under the silencing spell, and fires.
There’s a crash and a cloud of shredded paper as the spell obliterates the writing desk. The candle rolls to the floor, burning wax and flames dripping on the wooden planks.
“That wasn’t very nice,” Newt says disapprovingly. “What if I didn’t have backup notes? Did you even think of that?” Graves whirls around, gritting his teeth at the sight of Newt leaning against the bed post. He hadn’t even seen the damn vampire dematerialising.
Newt nods to the rapidly spreading flames behind Graves. “Are you going to do anything about those? I have a deposit on this place, you know.”
“Shame,” Graves spits, and disapparates. He appears in one of the back alleys he favours and, just in case Newt was tracking him, immediately hops to a rooftop, a darkened corner of a subway station, and finally an abandoned building site. It’s late afternoon, the sunlight streaming rich-red between the exposed girders and bright enough to discourage even the strongest vampires from following.
“This,” Newt says, perched on a half-built wall and drumming his heels against the concrete, “is a dump.” Graves swallows a scream of frustration and fires another killing curse; this time he sees the wisp of smoke as Newt fades out of the way. The wall explodes in a shower of rubble and dust, and Newt takes a new position crouched on a metal post with his wings out for balance like some overgrown bird.
“Rude,” he complains.
“Rude?” Graves repeats in disbelief. He spreads his arms out in a gesture that encompasses the building site, Newt on his damn post looking politely interested of all the fucking things, and, oh yes, the fucking sun. “How are you even here?”
Newt shrugs. “I track all of my creatures,” he explains, unrepentant and completely ignoring the way Graves glares at being referred to as one of Newt’s creatures. “What if you ran off and got lost? I’d need to know where you were.”
Leaving aside quite how insulting that was - and, though Graves refuses to admit it, how unsettling (how the fuck can he outrun a creature that can track him anywhere he goes if he doesn’t know how he’s being tracked?) - Graves focuses on what should have been one of the vampire's biggest weaknesses. “It’s daylight,” he stresses leadingly.
“Is it? I hadn’t noticed.” Except that the infuriating smile and the quirk of Newt’s head says he knows exactly what information Graves is after and is being a complete and utter bastard about withholding it because he’s a little fucking shit. “Best get home and back to bed then, it’s far too early to be awake. That is, of course, if there’s a bed left by the time we get there - did you really need to set the place on fire?”
He blinks, wide-eyed and falsely innocent, and Graves blasts him with another killing curse just for that alone. The post disintegrates. Newt reappears behind Graves, arms already winding around his waist and holding him still, and the pair of them dissolve into smoke.
When they land, Graves throws his head back in an attempt to break Newt’s nose and drive the vampire back into the fire that is still burning what the actual fuck Newt, why was messing with Graves more important than putting the fucking flames out and Newt responds by dropping Graves in a pile of ash and soot and asking, oh so cheerfully, if Graves would mind dealing with the mess while Newt went to see if the aurors were giving him his case back or not. Also would he consider accepting his situation and not running off next time? As fun as it is, Newt has better things to do than retrieve him.
Graves is left staring in open mouthed outrage at the spot Newt used to occupy and no, no he does not accept his situation. Not in the slightest. There is violent hatred right up to the point where there is violent sex and beyond that to the point where some idiot decides that the best way to take a vampire down is to aim for the soft and squishy human he keeps as a pet, at which point there’s just straight up violence until Newt gets Graves back.
Accept his situation, feh. Graves maintains a weekly average of four and a half murder attempts and three escape attempts and Newt coos in absolute delight at each one. Some fucker actually does get close to taking Newt down - this guy called Grindelwald? Has an army of inferi and a really bad haircut? - and Graves marches right up to the asshole and shivs him with his holy iron knife because hell no, Graves has put the best years of his life into trying to kill Newt, he isn’t letting some bleached charlatan steal his thunder.
It’s not the healthiest of relationships, and it’s filled with far more swearing and assassination attempts than most are, but it works. Just about. Maybe. Eh, they were both alive last I checked, that’s probably all that counts.